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Ethiopian Airlines 737-MAX Crashes After Take-off

BBC News, Sunday 10 March 2019
Ethiopian Airlines crash - latest updates. :
Summary:
• An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 passenger crashed soon after take-off
• None of the 149 passengers and eight crew members believed to be on board survived, the airline says
• There were people from more than 30 nationalities on board
• It was the second Boeing 737 Max-8 to crash in five months.

Re: Ethiopian Airlines 737-MAX Crashes After Take-off

ATW Online; Tuesday 12 March 2019
MAX crash divides US from rest of world on aviation safety calls

The immediate aftermath of the Ethiopian Airlines’ Boeing 737 MAX crash is stunning. While it is not unprecedented for the aviation authorities and airlines of non-US countries to diverge from FAA on when an aircraft grounding is necessary, it is unusual. And the scale of this divergence is unprecedented.

In less than 60 hours of flight 302’s crash in Addis Ababa on Sunday, the MAX had been grounded pretty much any place where it is operated. By Tuesday evening, Austria, France, Germany, Ireland and the UK were among European countries that had already stopped MAX flights. They are notable because they did so even though EASA had not issued a grounding by that time. Then came the incredible announcement from EASA that it was issuing an immediate order to ground all MAXs, suspending operation of any aircraft into or within European Union countries.

By then, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore had already grounded the new narrowbody, while several individual airlines that operate the MAX had pulled the aircraft from their schedules.

FAA and Boeing remained firm on Tuesday that there was no data or information from the Ethiopian crash to link whatever caused the October crash of a Lion Air MAX 8, or to indicate the aircraft is unsafe. And the US airlines with MAXs in their fleets continued to fly them.

Re: Ethiopian Airlines 737-MAX Crashes After Take-off

The FAA, relying on refined satellite tracking data and new physical evidence that more closely links two crashes of Boeing 737 MAX 8s, grounded Boeing’s newest narrowbody March 13, with immediate effect.

The move ends three days of cascading groundings after the March 10 Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 (ET302) crash, and leaves the world’s MAX fleet grounded.

“On March 13, 2018, the investigation of the ET302 crash developed new information from the wreckage concerning the aircraft’s configuration just after takeoff that, taken together with newly refined data from satellite-based tracking of the aircraft's flight path, indicates some similarities between the ET302 and [October 2018 Lion Air JT610] accidents that warrant further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause for the two incidents that needs to be better understood and addressed,” FAA said in its emergency order.

FAA Acting Administrator Dan Elwell, speaking to reporters after the order was released, made it clear that FAA made the decision to ground the aircraft.

“The FAA is the safety authority for emergency airworthiness directives and orders,” he said. “FAA made the decision.”

US President Donald Trump announced the move in a White House briefing at 2:30 p.m. US ET March 13.

“I didn’t want to make this decision today,” Trump said. “I felt it was important, psychologically and in a lot of other ways. We just thought it was the right thing to do.”

Trump said he spoke to both Boeing and US-based MAX operators, and they “agreed it is the right thing to do.”

The stunning move brings an end to a cascading series of MAX groundings that swept the globe.

Re: Ethiopian Airlines 737-MAX Crashes After Take-off

A preliminary analysis of data from Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders provides the strongest evidence yet linking the accident sequence to the October 2018 crash of Lion Air flight JT610.

“Our experts and US experts have proven the accuracy of the information,” Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges said in a statement March 17. “The Ethiopian government has absorbed the information. The cause of the crash was similar to that of Indonesia’s flight 610.”

A detailed analysis will be made public “in a month,” she added.

While no specifics were provided on the data, downloaded by France’s Bureau d'Enquêtes & d'Analyses (BEA) over the last few days, Moges’s statement suggests the two nearly new Boeing 737 MAX 8 accidents are linked to a flight control issue. Investigation into the JT610 accident is focused on the MAX’s maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS) flight-control law that assists pilots in certain manual, flaps-up flying scenarios, especially at slow airspeeds and high angles of attack (AOA). It automatically trims the horizontal stabilizers nose-down when it detects the AOA is too high.

Investigators believe faulty data from an AOA vane triggered MCAS during JT610’s flight, even though the aircraft’s nose was not too high. The flight crew responded with opposite nose-up commands, but MCAS is programmed to continue trimming nose-down based on the data it receives. With the AOA vane feeding erroneous data, MCAS kept attempting to push the 737 MAX 8’s nose down, and the pilots responded with nose-up commands. This back-and-forth continued for several minutes, causing the aircraft to lose and gain altitude, before it dove into the Java Sea, killing all 189 onboard